As Dixons Do
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Caryl AU. Life sometimes throws curve balls, and they can easily find themselves off the path that they thought they were on, but family will always be there to see them through, as Dixons do. Primarily Caryl, some Mandrea, other characters will feature.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: So here we go. I have about four stories that will be wrapping up soon (at least as soon as I can get out the last chapters of them) so I thought I'd introduce to you some of the new stuff that I've been planning and wanting to work with. So far, I've got two Caryl and one McReedus I'm toying with, but this one is the one I'm brushing off and showing to the world first. **

**It's AU. It's very AU. That's pretty much all I'm going to say about that. It's going to be a mostly Caryl fic, but it will feature others too, sometimes heavily. **

**If you decide to read, I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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Daryl lie in bed in the state just before sleep takes over where his whole body might have been floating on a raft at sea instead of lying firmly in his bed on the mattress that they hadn't changed for so many years that it was probably embarrassing. His house was quiet because it was too late for anything different. He'd been there for at least an hour and a half, having stayed up barely an hour after he'd forced Sophia, against her will, to go upstairs and get ready for bed.

When the silence in the house was broken by some thumping around and the sound of footsteps scuffling across the wooden floors, he perked a little, roused slightly from his slumber. He paused, almost holding his breath, and listened for evidence of what it was.

It could be anything. It could be a situation of "a drink of water" or it could be a situation of "Dad's asleep and won't know I'm watching television when he told me not to". He was trained, by now, to recognize the difference in all of these types of things within a few moments.

It was someone in the kitchen, he could hear that. And when he heard the tink of something metal against glass he had it rounded down to two possibilities. It was either the "snack monster" or it was Carol finally getting home and he'd simply missed the sound of her car in the driveway.

Daryl roused himself up enough to sit up in the bed and glance at the clock. She had to stop keeping the hours that she kept. He understood that her job was demanding and he understood that it required her to keep, sometimes, some terrible hours, but he also felt that she often got taken advantage of.

Carol worked at a law office for a very busy law firm. She had moved up in the office from being nothing more than a casual receptionist to being one of their "right hand ladies," and her salary reflected her efforts, even if her title didn't. As a result, she had a pretty erratic schedule. She could easily get days off when their life required it, and it did often, but she ended up making that time up plus some with the extra hours she had to work on days when they were working big cases sent down the line to them and she was around doing research and helping with sorting out tangled facts so that they were more clearly represented for the great minds actually handling the cases.

Tonight had been a late night for her. It was after ten.

Daryl kept his own share of late nights, from time to time. He and his brother owned a shop and that meant that he, whether he liked it or not, sometimes had to stay late to make sure that something got done when it somehow didn't get looked after during the regular working hours. It was those late nights, nights that Carol always made sure to make it home for the girls, that kept Daryl from complaining when the shoe was on the other foot.

Daryl sat in bed and listened to the shuffling about of his wife. Now that he knew it was her, he could mentally track her every move. She'd come in, fixed something of the leftovers that he'd left in the microwave for her, left those dishes for washing along with the breakfast dishes, and then she'd locked the door. From there she would be slowed down in her progress to their bedroom as she straightened things that caught her attention, things he had never managed to handle just right.

Then there was the creaking of the stairs. She always went up. He could hear the sound of the boards of the floor above him shifting and creaking slightly beneath her weight as she went from room to room, quietly, and checked on everyone there. He heard her voice, for the first time since he'd talked to her on the phone to verify that she'd miss dinner, coming over the monitor that they didn't really need but had never disconnected. She spoke quietly to Judith, who was likely still sleeping, and then progressed in her tour of making sure that sweet dreams found their way to everyone.

And then there was the descent down the stairs and finally she opened the bedroom door and appeared to him, a dark shadow against a dark background.

"You can turn on the light, if you need it," he offered.

"I thought you'd be asleep by now," Carol responded.

"Never quite asleep until you get here," Daryl said.

She didn't turn on the light. She passed through the darkness to their bathroom and turned on that light, bathing herself in the light for him to see through the contrasts. He watched her as she undid her day.

The clothes came off and she shed the restrictive layers of the business suit, the bra that she got rid of every day as soon as she felt it was "respectable" to do so, even the underwear that she had hated to sleep in since the first night he'd convinced her to leave them on the floor beside the bed instead of putting them back on to mark, definitively, the end of the love that they'd made.

He watched her, naked, wash her make up off, brush her teeth, and take her contacts out. He watched her slather on and smooth in the cream that she put on every night, already waging some war against time that she was convinced was going to rob her of her beauty.

Daryl didn't believe that time or anything else could rob her of her beauty. He'd met her when she was 20 years old. He'd been on two dates with her roommate, having been introduced to the idea of dating "college girls" by a buddy, and the woman hadn't interested him much at all. He remembered thinking she was pretty, she had a nice personality, but there just wasn't really anything there. And then he'd met her roommate and he'd immediately, and not without its own share of awkward feelings, known why he hadn't found the woman he'd gone out with enticing.

He believed in love, and though he'd never really believed in love at first sight, he realized immediately that he was in heavy like with the roommate of the girl he was trying to date.

And, luckily enough, since it was a situation that might have ended badly, the girl that he'd been dating had released him of any obligation that he might have to her, declaring that she really hadn't "felt" anything either. She was pleased, though, when he promised to introduce her to someone.

Daryl was probably one of the few men in the world that could say that he'd, for however short the period of time, dated his sister in law.

And though things hadn't worked out with him and Andrea, Daryl had married Carol when she was 22 years old had graduated college. And six months later? Six months later his brother had stood at the front of a church, one of the few times he'd ever been in one of the buildings, and thanked Daryl for not wanting to date his wife.

A year after the nuptials between the Dixon men and their now wives of almost twenty years, Merle and Andrea had proudly welcomed Merle Jr. into the world. Now he was a bouncing boy of 17 and hell on wheels on his best days, the spitting image of his father. Daryl and Carol had wanted the same for themselves, both craving a family, but they'd started to believe it would never happen for them. Years were long when you counted them with disappointment month after month.

But Sophia had come into the world, clearly opinionated and headstrong after it had taken them almost 30 hours to coax her out, just two years after her cousin.

And two years later? Merle and Andrea gladly welcomed Randy, who seemed to coax Lizzie to come on along a year later, matching their households two for two.

So they were pretty surprised when Mika followed her sister just a year later. And a year after that? Jacob joined his brothers.

And then the population of Dixon children, a large population per capita given that Merle and Andrea had bought the house next to Carol and Daryl's the moment it had hit the market, had reached its full capacity. Six Dixons between them, almost perfectly matched, and everything in the world was right.

That was, of course, until Judith and Hays came into the world two years ago, close enough together in age that they might as well have been running some kind of race to see who could arrive first. Judith had won the race, probably because she was always determined to beat Hays at everything, but only by a week and a half.

Through it all, though? Through everything that Daryl heard so many people say would make them pull their hair out or jump ship completely? Daryl had simply fallen a little more in love with his life.

Every child that others declared would bring them to madness, made Daryl just a little more sure that there was a God somewhere. His life just got better and better.

And the woman that he'd been with, from first date until the current date, for almost twenty two years?

Well, she was magical and he was convinced of it. He had teased her since their second date that she'd put some kind of potion in his drink to make him fall in love with her, and he was convinced that she brewed it up in secret and slipped it to him in his coffee every morning, because the spell of it had never faded. And if he had his way? It never would.

So she didn't need the cream, because she wasn't as beautiful now as she'd been when she was twenty…she was _more_ beautiful. And "almost 42", as she referred to herself often, looked good on her. And even though Daryl told her that all those "lines" she said the cream would "fight" were lovely to him…because they reminded him of the year she tried to cook the Thanksgiving turkey in the microwave because of something she'd seen on television or the time that Sophia and Lizzie broke the banisters off the staircase and broke Mika's arm sending her down the stairs in their "homemade sleigh"…even though he loved those lines, he still bought her the cream. Because no matter what he thought of her, he wanted her to like what the hell she saw when she looked in the mirror, and he wanted her to see what he saw, and if the cream made that happen, it was worth the price.

Carol switched off the bathroom light and shuffled toward the bed in the darkness, clearly feeling her way as she came. Daryl felt when she sunk into the bed, both of them blinded momentarily by the change from light to dark, and he rolled into her, wrapping his arms around her before she could even get settled. She sunk into the bed, arranged herself the same way she did every night, and Daryl moved to fit his body tight against hers, resting with his chin near the crook of her neck.

He sighed at the feeling of having her there and at the relief his mind felt over the fact that it could finally give into the sleep that it had been holding just at arm's distance.

"Did you go?" She asked quietly.

"Yeah," he said. "Talked to Merle too. You can get off on Wednesday, right? That's what'cha said?"

She hummed at him in the affirmative and tangled her fingers in those of the hand he had wrapped around to the front of her body.

"You go?" He asked.

"At lunch," she said.

"And?" He asked.

She made a noise that was crossed between a groan and a moan.

"I hope you think five's a nice, even number," Carol responded, already sounding like she was dedicated to going to sleep.

Daryl smiled to himself and chuckled. He moved his head to kiss the back of her neck before he settled back into his place and squeezed her gently with the arm wrapped around her.

"I never was too good at math," he commented. "But I do know it'll all come out even. Love ya."

"Love you too," was the soft response he got, and the last words he heard before he closed his eyes and gave into the sleep he'd been aching for during the last couple of hours.


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Here we go, another little chapter here. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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Daryl flipped the slices of bread into the plates as quickly as he could, put more on to cook and delivered the plates to the table where his two oldest daughters, Lizzie always trying to mimic her older sister, were sitting and looking pouty over the fact that morning had come and disturbed everything they'd had planned for their lives.

"Eat," he commanded as he put the plates down. "Bus is coming soon."

"This is gross," Sophia complained, poking her fork at her breakfast.

"It's toad in a hole an' you've always liked it," Daryl responded as he went back to the frying pan to flip the breakfasts waiting there.

For years he and Carol had the family running as much like a well oiled machine as they could possibly get it to run. Their organization and willingness to divide each and every task of the day wasn't so much owing to the fact that they liked it that way as it was owing to the fact that this was the only way that things got done when your household was occupied by so many people, all of which had to be somewhere by a given hour almost every morning.

"Well I don't like it now," Sophia protested from the breakfast table. Mika appeared at Daryl's side to await her plate. When her breakfast was ready, he flipped it onto a plate an offered it to her. "Do you know how many calories are probably in this?" Sophia asked.

Breakfast on a plate for him, toast and jam for Carol. Daryl quickly turned off the eye of the stove, moved the pan he'd been using, and went for the items that would make up Judith's "first breakfast," her second one and more substantial one offered to her at daycare.

"I don't," Daryl said, putting the jar of baby food on the tray of Judith's chair and putting the plate of toast by Carol's seat before ever getting around to taking his own chair. "An' it don't matter. What the hell you worried about calories for anyway…"

The conversation was broken by the appearance of Carol, barefoot still, but dressed, who came in with Judith and got the girl in her high chair.

Since she didn't stop to offer him one, and since he hadn't really seen her all morning, Daryl got up quickly and pecked the lips she puckered for him when she saw him coming. She smiled when he pulled away and he couldn't help but do the same.

"You know how many calories is in toad in a hole?" Daryl asked.

Carol rolled her eyes around like she was searching for the answer and then shook her head, offering Judith food in between bites of her own.

"Why?" She asked when she'd swallowed.

"Sophia here is concerned about it," Daryl said.

"You're too young to worry about calories," Carol said. "Besides, it's good for you. Eat your breakfast."

"You're built like ya Ma," Daryl offered. "You ain't gonna get fat."

Sophia rolled her eyes at him.

"That means it'll all go straight to my hips," she said in a sarcastic tone of voice that made Daryl chuckle and made Carol protest loudly the insult she felt at such a comment.

"Them hips are the reason this tables so crowded," Daryl commented, reaching over to playfully swat at Sophia who was smiling now. "You better watch yourself."

"Mama!" Mika said suddenly and with wide eyes. "I forgot that I was supposed to bring cupcakes for the bake sale!"

Carol groaned.

"You want me to take her somewhere? 'Fore school?" Daryl offered quickly.

Carol shook her head.

"No," Carol said. "How many times have I told you that you've got to tell me these things as soon as you find out about them?"

Mika offered an apology.

"Get my purse," Carol said. "I'll give you some money and you can just give them that."

"That's not really very good for the bake sale," Lizzie offered.

"There'll be more food there than gets eaten," Carol said with a sigh, accepting her purse from Mika who had gotten up to get it, not wanting "dilly dallying" to be added to her morning's offenses. "They just want the money anyway."

She offered Mika money across the table and then went back into the billfold to come up with a dollar.

"Here," she said, offering it to Mika. "This is for you to get whatever you want."

Lizzie's hand came across the table too and was filled with a bill.

"Sophia?" Carol asked. "Anything going on at your school?"

"No," Sophia answered honestly. "But I could get something out the vending machine at lunch."

Carol offered her the dollar at any rate.

"Thought you was worried about calories?" Daryl asked. He snickered at the expression of his daughter. He turned his attention to Carol. "You gettin' off on time today, right? So we can talk?"

Carol looked at him and made a face. He widened his eyes at her.

"You can't go working all night every night," he commented. "It was almost eleven thirty when you got home."

"I'll be home at six," Carol said. Her tone of voice indicated that she was having the last of this conversation. Daryl knew she wasn't ready to talk about things in front of the girls yet, but he felt they were speaking in enough code that even Sophia didn't know what they were talking about. She wouldn't have any reason to suspect it at any rate. "We'll talk then."

"When are we going to talk about my car?" Sophia asked.

"I didn't know you had one," Daryl commented.

Sophia growled at him and he chuckled to himself again. It was really the only way to get through the emotional ups and downs that sharing his house with five women of varying ages could offer. He had to find things humorous whenever possible.

And Sophia's sixteenth birthday was coming up in four months. She'd already begun to worry about it. Like he assumed every teenager was, Sophia was concerned about this birthday. It was a birthday of monumental importance. It would be the shining year of her life, or so she thought, and one of the most important aspects of it was the chance to get her license and, if she was lucky, obtain some sort of transportation that would get her off the bus and offer her the freedom that she craved with every waking hour.

She'd been worrying about it since about a month after her fifteenth birthday. And nearly every time that she'd brought it up, Daryl had done something to irritate her, pretending most of the time that he'd forgotten entirely the day that she'd ever come into the world…even though, arguably, she was the one of their children they'd been most prepared for and planned for the most.

"Come on, Daddy! MJ got a car when he turned sixteen!" Sophia whined.

Daryl chuckled again.

"MJ ain't no kinda reference that you should be using to get what you want," Daryl said. "Besides…MJ bought that car. Worked a job, earned his money, got that car. He fixed it too. Fixed it in his spare time. I'm not just shellin' out money for you to have a car when I ain't so much as seen you offer to do the chores around the house you have to do without moanin' about it."

Sophia's face said she clearly wasn't amused by the game changer he'd just thrown at her. It was the truth, though. Every one of the girls had chores, most of which they rotated off depending on the day, and every one of them acted like they were doomed to a life of indentured servitude instead of like they were doing basic things that needed to be done around the house and were, essentially, cleaning up the messes that they helped to make.

And Merle Jr., known to most of them more commonly as MJ, had worked at the shop since he was fourteen. He'd worked nearly every day after school, every weekend, and all summer. And as far as Daryl could recall, he'd only missed a day or two in three years. The car that he'd bought himself had started out a rolling piece of trash and he'd turned it into a pretty nice car.

That was a whole different idea than simply sinking money into a vehicle and handing the keys over to his teenager.

"I can't get a job if I don't have a way to get there," Sophia said.

Daryl ducked to the side and looked under the table.

"How 'bout that," he commented. "You got two feet!"

"So what?!" Sophia protested. "We're not even going to talk about this?!"

She shot a look at Carol who was really far more interested at the moment in getting Judith's shoes on her feet.

"We'll talk about it," Carol said. "Just not right now. Your dad is right, at least partially, and we'll have to discuss things."

"Everyone at school gets cars for their birthday when they turn sixteen," Sophia grumbled.

"Everyone?" Carol commented. "Well…that's going to be terrible if you're the only person at school who doesn't get a car on her sixteenth birthday."

Daryl chuckled at the sarcasm dripping off Carol's words. She wasn't interested in the slightest in discussing this, especially not over breakfast.

"It's a parent's job to scar they're kids," Daryl commented.

"Well you're doing a good job of it!" Sophia protested.

He got up from the table and got the brown bag lunches he'd made before he'd even begun breakfast.

"Time for buses, so time for a move on," Daryl said.

And the three oldest girls, Lizzie and Mika trying to be the "good children" for the moment since Sophia was hell-bent on having a rough morning, got up to get their lunches. He offered each of them the bag with their lunch and got a quick hug in return for it.

Then they passed by, hugged and kissed Carol goodbye while she was gathering up breakfast dishes that would get washed after work, and filed out the door with their book bags.

And Daryl sighed with relief when the door closed behind them.

"What's left to be done?" Carol asked, walking around him and putting plates into the sink before he came with glasses and she went back for what was left.

"Nothin'," Daryl said. "I just gotta put my shoes on. You?"

"Same," she commented.

"You takin' Jude?" He asked.

"Yeah," Carol commented, I've got time.

He caught her with his arms around her and pulled her to him so she kissed him, even if it did seem a little reluctant.

"That was a sorry kiss," he commented.

She laughed and went back in for another, this time with more enthusiasm than before.

"What are we going to do about the car thing?" Carol asked. "We need a real answer for her."

Daryl groaned.

"Lemme think on it? I don't got an answer right now and neither do you," Daryl said.

"Talk tonight?" Carol asked.

"Got other things to talk about tonight," Daryl said. "But you get off work early enough and we might have time to cover it all."

Carol groaned, but she offered him another kiss and sunk into him for a quick hug before pulling away from him entirely.

The breaking of the hug was the signal. They were off and the day had officially begun. She would go her way and he would head down the road to the shop he shared with his brother so they could get things opened up and get started.

"Go get your shoes," Daryl said. "I'll get Jude cleaned up."

"I'll bring your shoes," Carol said.

By the time she came back, wearing her shoes and brining his, he had the youngest ready to go and Carol gathered up her bags and the ones pertaining to Judith.

"Who's pickin' her up?" Daryl asked.

"I've got her," Carol said. "I'm going to see if I can get off by five today. I think…I need to come home, and we need to talk. Can you be home?"

Daryl nodded.

"Make my own hours," he confirmed with a wink.

Carol nodded at him and he offered her one more kiss and passed her Judith.

"I can feel it," Carol commented. "It's going to be a long day."

"We'll get through it," Daryl said. "It's what we do."

She offered him her best "tired and not ready to start the day" smile and nodded before she started out the door, wrestling with her load of things to carry. He would have offered to carry it for her, but she was hardheaded, most of the time, about carrying her own things…so he figured he'd just show up ten minutes late and wash the breakfast dishes instead.

She would be stressed about everything for a few days, maybe even for a few weeks. She always was when life popped up with some kind of surprise for them, but he knew that if she had her time to come to terms with things and work things out for herself, she'd be back to her "in control" self.

And they'd work through this too. Just like everything else.


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: Here we go, another little chapter here. **

**Sorry, it's taking me a while everywhere. Work is super busy. I write where I can, when I can. It's the best I can do. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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"We have three hours easy," Daryl declared, closing the bedroom door to give them privacy. Even though no one was there, and even though they could have had a conversation in their living room like normal people probably did, it was too deeply ingrained in both of them that "in the bedroom, door's closed" meant that they were going to get to have an actual conversation and little hands could request entrance but couldn't come directly inside.

Carol had gotten off work early and so had he. Granted it was after five and it was an hour that some would call a normal hour to be off work, but for them? For them it simply wasn't all that normal for both of them to be home at that hour. And his sister in law had graciously offered to "invite" all the kids to her house for a hair pulling night of pizza and a movie to serve as a distraction.

Carol was stripping out of her clothes, out of her armor for the day, to slip into pajamas. Daryl watched her while she did it, piece by piece removing the "Carol" she constructed for the office.

"So what is there to discuss?" Carol asked. "You're having the surgery. Do we tell the girls what it is? Or do we just say it's a procedure and they don't need to worry about it?"

"Do you want to discuss my testicles with all of them?" Daryl asked.

Carol snorted from inside the closet where she'd stepped to hang up the clothes she was taking off.

"Procedure it is," she responded. She came out of the confined space wearing nothing but her underwear, no bra at this point, and Daryl followed her to the bathroom where she set about washing off the make-up that she no longer bothered wearing whenever she was "safe and comfortable" inside her home. It was a mask that she didn't need, and she certainly didn't need it for him. "And you're sure you're good with this? You're…fine with it?"

Daryl laughed to himself. He laughed because this part of the conversation was a part that they'd had at least two dozen times over the span of the two years since Judith was born. They'd talked about it so long and she'd worried so much that he was going to decide that he was lying about being fine with it, that they'd actually gone and put it off too long.

"I'm fine with it, just the same as I was yesterday," Daryl commented, leaning against the door frame. "You're gettin' off work, though?"

She finished wiping at her face and a wicked smile curled across her face before she turned her back to him to dry her face off on the towel.

"You want me to come with you?" She asked. There was a hint of teasing in her voice. She turned around, her lip poked out to accentuate the teasing. "You want me to hold your hand?"

Daryl narrowed his eyes at her, but he couldn't help but smile. He knew she was teasing. And, honestly, she'd delivered four kids into this family already…she might as well tease him about this.

"Hell yeah I do," he declared. "I held your hand…every time you damn near broke mine off, I held yours. Time for you to pull ya weight around here…do a little handholding yourself."

She hummed at him, made a flippant face, and walked past him, out of the bathroom, and went for pajamas then.

"You don't gotta put them on," he said. "We got three hours."

She gave him an expression. He decided to take it as right now I'm saying no. After all, they had three hours.

She put her pajamas on anyway and got comfortable on the bed.

"So the surgery," she said as she went about arranging pillows. "So there's that. That's something we should have done two years ago when she started talking about it."

Daryl hummed at her to neither agree nor disagree.

He wasn't sure why it hadn't been done before, exactly. It wasn't that he'd ever really fought the idea, not once she'd presented it to him. Their choices of extreme birth control were either getting her tubes tied, or in another manner, getting his done. His were more accessible. His surgery was an outpatient surgery where the information he'd been given almost boiled down to "take two aspirin" for the recovery. Getting her tubes tied, however, when they'd looked into it seemed like it was more complicated.

And since she'd "gone to the mat" four times, she'd reasoned and he'd agreed, that this was his contribution to their family.

But for whatever reason it had just gotten put off or forgotten. And it might have gone on being put off and forgotten for even longer if she hadn't gotten a hunch that things weren't exactly as they should be.

By now? They knew to trust the hunches.

Daryl came over and sat on the edge of the bed, ridding himself of the socks he'd been padding around in and watching his own feet as he stretched his toes, all then of them happy with their freedom at the moment.

"Shoulda, coulda, woulda," Daryl commented. "But we didn't."

He turned to look at her.

"You gonna even tell me what they said?" He asked.

She looked almost angry at him. Maybe, he figured, if she was going to be angry about things she had a right to be angry at him, but as far as he remembered, they'd done everything as a team…so she was technically as involved in the whole thing as he was.

She shrugged in a slightly aggressive manner.

"What do you want me to say, Daryl?" She asked. "What do you think they said? They said I'm pregnant. Not that I needed them to really tell me that. I can read the…the…"

She flapped her hand toward the bathroom.

"Tests?" Daryl offered. He got a nod of the head and bit back the urge to chuckle.

She did this. She always did this. He could count on it as surely as he'd ever counted on anything. She did it even with Sophia and they'd planned and prayed and cried and begged to have her.

But it was all part of Carol's "coming to terms" with it. She had to be angry first. Then they'd pass through scared. Then they'd take a short turn down "can't do this" before they came to a good coast at "we're doing this…we can do this."

And that had been her mantra for most of their time together.

_We can do this._

But there weren't any shortcuts and they had to take the scenic route to get there, so right now there was nothing to do but ride through the bumpy parts in the road. Daryl could push it along a little, but some of it just had to work itself out.

"How long you been pregnant?" Daryl asked. "Or I don't get to know that and I'm just gonna guess as we go along?"

She rolled her eyes at him, but he caught a hint of a smile curling at the corner of her mouth.

"Seven weeks, eight," Carol mumbled.

Daryl nodded. That was fine. Seven or eight weeks, that was a good, solid number.

"You just mad about it because you need to be mad? Or you mad and we need to talk about it?" Daryl asked. "Because…Carol, there ain't no need to be mad. We done this before. We done it four times. We'll just do it again. That's all."

Carol sighed.

"What about the kids?" Carol asked.

"What about 'em?" Daryl responded.

"What do we tell them?" Carol asked. "Sophia wants a car, but we can't afford a car if we have a baby. And college funds get less put into them. And…Judith was going to be the baby. She was going to be the last one. She's not even entirely weaned. She still gets milk in the morning and at night, Daryl. Because I wasn't worried about it. She's the baby."

Daryl chuckled.

"And now she ain't gonna be," he said. "That's all there is to it. Sophia wants a car, and she's gonna have to do somethin' to get one. I can get a junker cheap, that ain't no problem. But she's gonna have to put in some money on it. She can clean up at the shop if she don't wanna work nowhere else. And college funds? Carol…we've had college funds for every one of the kids since they were…well…big as this one is. I'll go next damn week and set one up for this one if you want. Less goes in, but it all adds up."

Carol continued to stare at him. He could take the glare of artificial anger. That was fine. He could deal with that all day because he knew it wasn't real. As long as it didn't crack and shatter into tears, he was fine.

"You're worried about it? You wean Jude. There. That's done. Carol, this ain't no big thing. You need to take more time off work anyway and I can pick up the slack if there's any needs picking up. We gonna be fine. Get through this just fine and in…what? Seven months? You ain't gonna remember why you were lookin' at me like I'm gonna be on the ten o'clock news as a missin' person," Daryl said.

Daryl sighed and got onto the bed next to Carol, assuming that if she truly wasn't interested in anything more, he might be able to at least talk her into a nap. A nap, these days, was a pretty precious thing.

She leaned over him.

"This means…I'm going to get fat again. But really fat. Daryl…I've been bigger with each one of the girls. Like the day I find out I…balloon out to there," she said.

Daryl snorted.

"Got some extra sheets in the closet. Make you a Mumu," he responded.

She growled at him, continuing to hover over him.

"Judith is almost potty trained," Carol said. "This is back to all diapers all the time. Back to…up every two hours. Back to…night of the living dead but you've still got to go to work feelings. Back to…all of it."

"Yeah," Daryl said. "Back to all of it."

He rolled then and pushed Carol's shoulders, pushing her down to lie on the mattress and he took the position that she'd held over him so that he could hover over her.

"And some of that? Gonna suck…always does. But it's back to…she just kicked. And it's back to she's got your eyes and look, that's my nose. And it's back to she's had me up all damn night but I'm still gonna stay up a few minutes after she sleeps just to look at her."

Carol's face softened a little.

"The girls aren't going to be happy," she said remorsefully.

"When are they?" Daryl asked. "Know ya audience."

He didn't give her a chance to say anything. He kissed her then because if he kissed her when her face was soft like that, she'd appreciate the kiss…and if he didn't? Then she'd just worry herself into another vortex of concern over something that really wasn't going to end up being half as bad as she was sure it was going to be.

And she did seem to appreciate the kiss. So he took the chance to move his hand and slide it just under the edge of her shirt where his fingertips could brush the soft skin there. And he chuckled to himself and pulled out of the kiss when she shivered.

"But you ain't interested at all, right?" He asked, raising his eyebrows at her and smirking.

She narrowed her eyes at him and moved to put her hand just inches from his face, finger and thumb barely apart.

"Maybe," she said, a little pout in her voice. "Just…about this much. But no more than that."

Daryl bit his lip and shook his head.

"No more?" He asked.

She shook her head back at him.

So he did the only thing there was to do, and he gently scratched his fingertips up her skin, taking the shirt with it, until he found her breast and gently massaged it. She arched her back, pushing her chest into his hand. And he ducked his head and teased her nipple with his tongue and teeth until she squirmed.

"How 'bout now?" He asked.

"Maybe…just a little more," she said.

Daryl straightened himself up and she watched him as he stripped out of his clothes, leaving his boxer shorts on just to taunt her a little. And he knew, since she was watching and not protesting, that it would be taunting.

He hooked his fingers in the elastic band of her pajama pants, caught the band of her underwear below it, and she raised her hips enough to let him slid them down and helped him work her legs out of it. He chewed his lip to keep from smirking as he dropped those to join his clothes on the floor.

"Now?" He asked.

She hummed at him.

And she wasn't interested at all, of course…that's what she'd said, but he wouldn't have known that at all when she spread her legs to him and made him bite his lip again to keep from laughing at his thoughts on the whole thing.

"You got the oddest damn ways," he said, pausing a moment to move so that he was more comfortable and could trail his tongue down the inside of her thigh. "Oddest damn ways of sayin' you ain't interested…"

The hum this time was more like a growl. So, of course, he traced the other thigh and as he neared her center, she raised her hips at him.

"Seems interested to me," he said. "Always wrong about this shit…"

"Daryl," she said, now a cross between a growl and a whine. She wasn't sure if she should beg or demand…it was nice a place to get her.

"Maybe I should just…" Daryl said.

But he never finished. He moved enough to tease her with his tongue and she shifted, pushing herself toward him, hands going to bunch up the cover in preparation for what she knew would come once the teasing was done.

"I'm just not sure," he teased.

"Daryl!" Carol growled out. She was going with demands. "Please?" She added. Daryl smiled to himself.

Or maybe they'd just fall somewhere in the middle.

He moved just enough to kiss her stomach, just below her belly button, and trailed his tongue across the skin there, kissing it once more.

"Only gotta ask once, Angel," he said. "I mean…we got at least two hours, right? Hate wastin' time."


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: Here we go, another little chapter here. **

**We've got some "Carol perspective" coming up soon.**

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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Long warring countries had negotiated peace with less looks of "I don't want to be here" than a simple table meeting at the Dixon household held…at either Dixon household, for that matter.

And the troops weren't going to get any happier when they heard why they'd been gathered together. Because if Sophia had thrown a "we don't need it" tantrum with Judith that Lizzie had followed for the sake of showing her allegiance, it was only going to be worse now.

But the announcement had to be made, and Daryl had already told Carol that he would handle it. He preferred to handle it.

And in situations like this? If the _Jude Treaty _of two years before was any indication? Carol was more likely to get emotional whereas he was more likely to be able to let the girls know just how little tolerated their madness was going to be in the household.

So it was after dinner. Dishes had been washed. The table had been cleaned. Everything was in order for the chaos to erupt. Daryl had called down everyone who had retreated to some other corner of the house and he had them all gathered around the table. The only one missing was Judith, and that was because she was fully occupied in the floor in the living room, a few feet away from them, playing with the blocks that she loved stacking and collapsing…and she wasn't going to fully understand anything at this point anyway.

Daryl cleared his throat when he wanted their attention and folded his hands in front of him on the table.

"We got a couple things to discuss," he said, putting it out there that this impromptu family meeting was more about business than pleasure, though the girls already knew that since it hadn't been brought up over dinner. If it wasn't brought up over dinner, that meant that he and Carol both were trying to minimize drama that might result in food spillage and or someone going to bed with an empty stomach.

"If this is about that C…" Lizzie started.

Carol shook her head at Lizzie.

"You'll bring it up," Carol said.

There wasn't anything to bring up. Lizzie made a C on a math quiz. One quiz. It was one quiz in a class where, as far as Daryl knew, she never made anything but As…but she was worried about it and she seemed to think that, ever since the day she'd brought it home, they were having private discussions on exactly _how_ and _when_ she would be executed.

"Lizzie," Daryl said, "ain't about the C. You got a C. I got so many Cs I didn't realize they was anything above it until I was in high school, and even then I didn't never see one of them grades on nothing with my name on it. We ain't that worried about it."

Lizzie was trying to look morose over her C, but Daryl saw her smirk at his admitted shortcomings in school. The girls, and he was grateful for this, took after Carol who had always been more studious than he had ever even wanted to be.

"This don't got at thing to do with grades," Daryl promised.

He saw Sophia shift with interest and lean slightly toward him. It didn't have to do with her nonexistent car either, and a lot of that would depend on how she acted this evening at any rate.

"Your Ma and me…got somethin' to tell you girls," Daryl said. "Wednesday, you know, I'm goin' to have that procedure done."

They'd heard about it, at least to some degree. They'd heard enough about it to know that they didn't need to really worry about it. They'd heard enough about it to know that it was just something "that had to be done" and they didn't need to worry, just like the root canal that Carol had the year before. It might be traumatic for the person going through it, but it wasn't anything the girls needed to be aware of beyond "this parent might be incapacitated for a short period of time and all complaints or suggestions should be directed to the other for the time being".

"Well, the reason I'm havin' it is so that we don't…"

Daryl stopped. He'd planned this whole thing out to some degree. He'd given the speech and made the big reveal to the girls about a dozen times throughout his workday. The only thing was that, in his head, things happened differently. For one thing, they weren't all looking at him like they were right now. Right now Mika was looking at him like she was afraid her world was about to crumble down to dirt, Lizzie looked like she had at least a hundred better things to be doing and if she nodded at him with that concerned look on her face he'd hurry up, and Sophia looked like she was almost bored enough to fall out of her chair and onto the floor.

And Carol? Carol was more concerned about what Judith was doing in the other room because she kept getting up and checking on her, even though there hadn't been a single thing to indicate that the little girl's actions were even the slightest bit different from what they'd been just moments before.

Daryl almost laughed.

Because he'd thought it was going to be a really serious announcement. He'd pictured it being somewhat solemn until he announced it, then he'd field complaints, and then there would be a big round of congratulations. And looking at their faces right now? It simply reminded him that things weren't going to work out that way at all. Things seldom worked out just like he thought they would.

Still, they ended up working out, one way or another.

"Doin' it so we don't have no more children," Daryl said. He bit his lip then, amusing himself slightly. "Ya Ma and me decided that this one's gonna be our last one. After that, there ain't no more Dixons comin' outta this house."

_And now they waited. _

Daryl figured Sophia was going to be the first to pick it up. He might have even given the title of "quickest" in the moment to Lizzie, but it was Mika that surprised him. And she surprised him entirely. Because from her look of concern, her face bled into a smile and her eyes widened.

And she wasn't concerned with Daryl any longer. She turned to Carol.

"You're having a baby!" She announced. It wasn't even a question at all. It was a cooed declaration, laced with a hint of excitement.

At least one of them was on board.

Carol smiled at Mika and nodded.

"Yeah," she said. "We are. In about seven months."

"NAH AHHH!"

With the spat declaration, Daryl nearly got whiplash from looking at the somewhat warm, holiday-esque scene between Mika and Carol and turning sharply toward Sophia who, after that declaration, was still stuck with her mouth partially open and an expression that declared that she hadn't entirely settled on whether or not she was going to be angry or cry about the whole thing.

"No! Are you serious?!" She declared, her senses having apparently settled on anger, but without entirely being dedicated to it.

Carol didn't really even look stunned. She just looked somewhat cross when she eyed Sophia.

"We're not going to lie about something like that," she offered.

Any other words of apology or explanation she might have offered Sophia were cut off by Sophia's immediate need to complain.

"Are you serious? Why? Why would you do that?!" She declared.

She was definitely creeping closer to crying. Lizzie, apparently, hadn't decided on which side of the fence she fell at the moment.

"Do it make you mad?" Daryl asked, biting the inside of his mouth at his eldest daughter's dramatics, dramatics she'd been prone to since the day she was born.

She scoffed at him as a response.

"Then that's why we done it," Daryl said. "We plan everything in this family around you, Soph…and what's gonna make your life the most miserable it can be."

Now she just moved her mouth at him, not quite sure how to respond and he couldn't even hide his amusement.

"Don't flap ya mouth at me like that," he said. "Look like a fish. Listen…this baby was a surprise for us too, but that don't mean a thing. Just means it's another good surprise we got outta life. It ain't gonna change nothing for you besides I'm expectin' you to do your chores around here, for once, without havin' to be asked a half a million times. Not the hardest thing in the world to empty the dishwasher."

"This is so unfair!" Sophia declared, now turning her full fury on him instead of on Carol. That was really what he preferred anyway. Carol took the girls' rantings to heart more often than he did. He'd honestly liked, ever since Sophia was little, to see how riled up he could really get them without doing anything at all to them. "What about money?"

Daryl snorted.

"Your allowance ain't gettin' cut," he responded. "You're still makin' top dollar for bein' reminded to empty the dishwasher."

She narrowed her eyes at him.

"What about college?" Sophia asked.

"They still runnin', last I heard," he responded, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest so that he could really enjoy the show that she seemed to be winding up for.

"This isn't fair! You're saying no to me getting a car because we can't afford it and you said no to Lizzie's trip because we couldn't afford it and now you're having a baby! How can you afford that?" Sophia asked.

Lizzie sat up now. Her sister had brought up something of interest to her and now the baby was, or at least she thought it was, affecting her life.

"That's right! I don't get to go to Washington, but you can have a baby?" Lizzie protested.

Daryl snorted.

"Listen, we're havin' another baby, we didn't empty the bank account on candy an' bad decisions," Daryl said. "You ain't goin' to Washington 'cause we're doing the whole family ski trip _you_ begged for. It's a trip for everyone instead a' just a trip for you where you ain't even gonna remember it no way and we gotta worry that'cha gonna get lost somewhere. And…the car? Soph…I don't care if I had enough money that we were wall paperin' the walls with it…I'd still tell you that you ain't gettin' no car that you don't do a thing for. You gonna work for it, one way or another. But…way I see it is ya Ma could use some help around the house. Really _good_ help. And you could offer service with a damn smile…an' then you might be workin' toward somethin'. You keep runnin' around here with ya bottom lip stuck out like that, though, actin' like you don't have it as good as you do, and you ain't never…an' I mean never…gettin' a car that I gotta put even one red cent into."

"Daryl…" Carol offered.

He looked at her and shook his head.

She nodded her head slightly, accepting that she'd agreed he could handle this, and sat back in her own chair. He wasn't dumb. He knew that she'd go around, like the sweet little "Mama Fairy" that she was and soothe over any hurt feelings when he wasn't around, but she'd let him have his say while it was his turn. They might not always agree on things, but one thing they did agree on was their decision to try not to disagree in front of the children. It was better, really, never to let them know that there was a division. They could fight it out behind closed doors, but did their best to present a unified front.

Sophia sucked her teeth, folded her arms across her chest, and dropped back into her chair with enough force that Daryl knew it had to hurt.

"You can take that attitude, right now, an' you can head on up to ya room," Daryl said, pointing in the direction of the staircase. "You keep actin' like that we'll put you in the garage an' give the baby your room…it's a sight more agreeable than you are already."

He barely swallowed back his laughter at her frustration, but she got up and headed up the stairs, stomping her feet every step of the way, not offering a goodnight to any of them. Carol would go up later. She'd be better in the morning.

Lizzie didn't comment one way or the other, but she wore a slightly bitter expression.

"May I be excused?" She asked, her voice monotone for the moment.

"You don't got nothin' to say too?" Daryl asked.

She stared at him cooly and then shook her head just a little.

"No sir," she said quietly. "May I be excused?" She repeated.

"Go ahead," Daryl said. "Night."

"Goodnight Daddy," she offered, though it was tossed back over her shoulder and came without the normal hug and kiss. "Night, Mama," she threw in as an afterthought.

Carol gave Daryl a look and he just shook his head gently.

It wasn't time to "sugarcoat" life for them yet. Not yet. Let them stew in it for a little while at least before she went up and more or less begged them to be OK with things.

"Mika?" Daryl asked.

Mika smiled at him.

"Can I name it?" Mika asked.

Daryl chuckled.

"You know you're my favorite, right?" Daryl teased. It was a line that he used on whichever kid was currently acting in the preferred manner. Mika smiled.

"Can I?" She asked again.

Daryl sighed.

"We'll consider whatever you offer," Daryl said.

"So you're really happy about it?" Carol asked. "Or you're just not going to show out?"

Mika shook her head at Carol.

"No, Mama," she responded. "I'm happy…what's not to be happy about? I get to be older than two now."

She stopped, a look registering on her face. When she spoke, Daryl realized it might have been a look that would have bothered some kids, but Mika thought it was special.

"I'm going to be right in the middle!" She declared.

Carol laughed at that and nodded.

"You will," Carol said. "Just like…cream in an Oreo."

Mika looked satisfied.

"Can I tell Katie?" She asked, Katie having been her best friend since they were eating play dough together in preschool.

"Tell whoever you want," Daryl said. "It ain't no secret."

Carol looked at him again.

"Maybe just Katie?" Carol asked. "For just a bit? Then we'll tell everyone? Keep it…something special?"

Mika seemed to accept that readily enough as well. Of course, whether it was age or disposition, she seemed to be the most positive of all their girls.

"Alright," Daryl said. "Go on up to bed? Come tuck you in after a few minutes?"

And he got a hug and a kiss from Mika when she got up. She had another for Carol as well, and Daryl saw her stop to harass Jude a little and tell her goodnight before she started up.

"You want me to get Jude ready?" Daryl asked when he was alone with Carol.

She nodded.

"I'll handle everyone else," she said.

"Went better'n I thought it would," Daryl said.

Carol nodded her head slightly.

"I meant what I said about the car," Daryl said. "So don't you go tellin' Soph she's gettin' a thing if she don't do something for it. I mean it."

"I'm not," Carol said.

Daryl got up and came over, leaning over the back of her chair to wrap his arms around her. She leaned into him, maybe a little sad that things hadn't gone over completely positively. He kissed her cheek.

"They'll be happier tomorrow," Daryl said. "And then they'll find somethin' else to be sore about."

Carol hummed at him and he dropped a hand to pinch playfully at her side, tickling her enough to elicit a smile. She laughed a little at him and reached a hand back to push at him.

"More like it, take ya time," he commented, heading to get Judith who would need a quick bath and pajamas, something he could cover while Carol tucked the others in and talked to them, before she was ready for Carol to feed her and put her down for the night. "Come on Jude, it's time to go with Daddy for a swim in the tile pond."


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: Here we go, another little chapter here. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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Carol came into the room with her arms loaded down with everything she was attempting to carry in one swoop. Having had four kids, a husband, and a career at the same time, she was almost an expert at carrying more things than one person should ever really be able to juggle at once. She considered it as almost something of an art form.

"Here is your Sprite, no ice, bendy straw…but blue, so it's still manly," she said with a wink, offering the drink glass to Daryl who took it quickly to keep her from dropping anything that might be in a precarious situation. "And your…grilled ham and cheese, two dill pickles on the side…whole not spears, dill not kosher."

She passed him the plate and he had to move quickly to keep one of the pickles from rolling off. Apparently she could manage to carry it fine, along with everything else, but he was going to have a hard time simply moving it the short distance for him to eat it.

"And Hot Rod magazine with the very lovely Miss…Motor-Motormova-whatever…woman in a red bikini, which should be great for your condition," Carol said with a snort.

"Look at the cars, not the tits," Daryl muttered, taking the magazine out of her hand as she began to burrow through that which she'd basically been carrying stuck under her arm, in her bra and everywhere else it was necessary to stick things when her arms were full.

"Pen and word search, picked out by Mikka, and…"

She grinned at him.

"Latest edition of my Better Homes and Gardens, and I haven't even read it yet, so you get all the credit for finding the good stuff," Carol said.

Daryl blushed a slight pink color as he accepted the magazine to go with his other treasures and chewed on the sandwich he was already half through.

"You didn't bring me no more ice?" Daryl asked.

"Daryl, I brought you fresh ice and an ice pack before I went to make the sandwich," Carol said. "We're almost out of ice."

"My balls need it," he said, with more of a grin than a suffering man should have been able to muster up. Still, she felt like they'd given him even better pain meds than she ever got surrounding the birth of any of their beautiful baby girls.

"You're down to defrosting the chicken for dinner if you can't make do with what you've got," Carol said.

He chuckled.

"And no it's not time for your meds, either," Carol said. "Was the sandwich good?" She asked, raising her eyebrow at him as he passed her back the now empty plate, the two pickles resting now on one of his napkins on the bed, apparently for later.

He nodded.

"Sit down with me? Half an hour? Ten minutes? I ain't askin' for your whole day," Daryl said.

Carol nodded at him and went around to get onto her side of the bed, crawling close enough to him to be near him, but not to disrupt anything of the mountain of things he'd requested since she'd brought him home.

"Are you feeling alright?" Carol asked, pursing her lips at Daryl to keep from smiling or laughing at him. She was supposed to be sincere. She was supposed to be supportive of him during his time of suffering. He was expecting it. And she was really doing her best, but her husband was also doing _his_ best to milk the situation of everything it was worth.

He shook his head.

"Hell no I'm not feeling alright," he responded, still sounding slightly too jovial for the words of his statement. "And don't you keep making them eyes at me. You know what the hell you're doin' and even with ice on my damn balls…just stop because I don't want no part of it. Go in the bathroom and…make yourself ugly or something."

"Make myself ugly?" Carol asked with a snort.

"You know…you know what the hell you're doing," Daryl said.

"What! What am I doing?" Carol protested.

"You're making them eyes at me, just like that…right there…still doin' it," Daryl said.

"I'm sorry," Carol offered. "What would you like me to do? Should I just…cover my face?" She asked, putting her hands up as a shield and peeking between her fingers.

"Can still see your eyes," Daryl offered.

"I have to see," Carol said. "But really," she asked, dropping her hands and trying to erase the amusement from her features, "how are you feeling? You need something else?"

"Nah," Daryl growled. "Really do feel kinda shitty, though."

Carol hummed.

"You're not used to the drugs either," she said. "And what they gave you relax, coupled with what you got for pain? You'll feel better when some of it wears off."

"And then I'ma be crystal clear they tried to cut my balls off and you were perfectly fine with it," Daryl teased. "You don't know…you don't know what it feels like."

Carol raised her eyebrows at him.

"You're right," she said. "I wouldn't have any idea. I only delivered all four of your children."

He smirked at her.

"You ain't never gonna let that go, are you?" He asked.

Carol shook his head.

"Never," she confirmed.

She paused a minute, trailing her finger along the stitching on the quilt, raised up as it covered Daryl who had insisted on going entirely back to bed after his "ordeal".

"It really doesn't bother you at all?" Carol asked. "That we're doing this again? That we were done after three…and then done after four…and now we're doing it again?"

Daryl looked visibly more serious than he had been. He shook his head.

"Nah," he said. "It really don't bother me at all. And, this time? We know five's our lucky number. There ain't no more honey in the honeypot now."

He smirked.

"You come up knocked up again, though? Then I'ma be good an' pissed," Daryl added.

Carol swatted at him playfully and leaned to offer him a peck of a kiss before she crawled back off of her side of the bed.

She meant to go get things out to defrost for dinner. She meant to run the dishwasher and put in another load of clothes. She meant to clean up Judith's room where the toys were starting to trickle into the hall upstairs and she meant to clean up the upstairs bathroom that looked like bath toys and various hair product and lip gloss companies had exploded in it. But instead? She ended up starting to put away one of the baskets of clothes that had made its way to her bedroom and stopped there.

"You mind?" Daryl asked.

Carol looked at him in question, thinking she might have missed him making some request.

"You mind we're havin' another one?" Daryl asked.

Carol chewed on the question a moment, refolding some of his underwear to make it neater before she put it away.

She didn't want to answer that question. She really didn't. Because her answer for that question seemed to change every five or ten minutes. She'd be bothered by the whole idea and then she'd see a commercial for diapers or for baby lotion and smile to herself at the thought they would do it again. Then, just as soon as she'd think she was happy about it, she'd find yet another "thing" that needed to be picked up, remember that she needed to schedule appointments for this or that, and then she'd dread the fact that they were doing it all again. She was, essentially, riding her own amusement park ride over this pregnancy and it had yet to come to a complete stop anywhere.

"You mind?" Daryl repeated, his voice changing tone slightly at her silence.

Carol shook her head and shrugged, simultaneously, as a response to the question.

"You wouldn't take that answer from a single soul in this house," Daryl scolded. "Carol Ann Dixon…at least tell me what the hell you're thinkin' over there."

Carol chuckled a little at the fact that he sounded like he was going to send her to her room if she didn't respond. She sighed, put the last of the socks away that she'd moved on to since the underwear and slinked back to the bed in much the same manner that she knew Sophia moved when she didn't want to answer a question about a test or some other such business she didn't care to discuss with them.

Carol sat against the edge of the bed.

"I'm just…up and down…and down and up…" she said. She frowned at him. "And sometimes, I throw in a little…"

She gestured with her hand.

"Loop de loop for good measure," Carol said.

"OK," Daryl said. "But you do that every time, Carol. You done it with Sophia, you done it all the way down to Judith. You backed outta our wedding twice before we got to the church and three times before you took to the aisle. I know. I'm probably the only groom in history ever sat on a toilet in the ladies' room of a church and talked to his wife in the next stall so she'd go through with handin' herself over for the rest of her damn life to his sorry ass."

Carol frowned at him and shook her head.

"You're wrong," she said.

"I'm not wrong," he said. "That's what you do. You gotta do it. You gotta freak out when you start somethin', but then…when you're done with that, you always do it all the way. No half assin'. But the freak out's gotta come first."

Carol shook her head again.

"I meant you're wrong," she said, "about your…sorry ass."

He smiled at her, winked at her, and picked up the Better Homes and Gardens magazine to peruse.

"Might have somethin' in here," he said, "some kinda…fall craft or somethin' that Mikka might like."

Carol laughed to herself. That was one of the reasons that Daryl liked the magazine, though he hated to admit it. He liked to make things. He liked to create them. Working with his hands was his thing, and even though cars were his chosen profession, he dappled in a little of everything. He'd started, with all the girls, from a young age working with them.

The thing was, they weren't as interested in some of the "projects" he might come up with on his own, so he'd turned a long time ago to the magazines that she searched through for recipes so that he could come up with things they might like to do together. As a result, she had more homemade ornaments than one house ever needed, enough birdhouses to feed the bird population of the entire state of Georgia, at least twenty assorted knickknack boxes and baskets…and a whole slew of other things.

"Are you going to…take care of me this time?" Carol asked.

Daryl looked at her and hummed in question.

"When the baby's born? Are you going to take care of me this time?" She asked.

"I always take care of you," Daryl said. He laughed to himself. "You sprained my hand, or broke it or whatever, when Mikka was born, if I remember correctly."

Carol winced. Mikka had been the largest of their four babies, and she'd been sure of that.

"Wasn't broken or sprained," she said.

"Felt like it," Daryl responded, looking back at his magazine.

"But you make me walk to the car on my own," Carol said. "The only reason I even got wheelchair service with Judith is because the nurse brought me one when I was checking myself in. I've gotten myself in the car after the baby comes…and back out at home."

Daryl looked at her then, smiled slightly, and nodded his head.

"Whatever you want," he said. "But all them things…you get me too turned around. You ain't never tried to take orders from you, but you're like 'Daryl, did you turn off the stove? Daryl, did you call Andrea? Daryl, did you get this…and that…that other thing? Daryl, get the baby. Daryl, put the baby in the car. Daryl, don't close the door with the baby in there, open it up. Daryl, don't leave the door open, baby'll get a draft. Daryl, hurry up and get the baby inside. Daryl, don't walk so damn fast you're swinging the car seat…get me so turned around I can't remember everything."

Carol laughed at him and crawled up on the bed, leaning across the pillows at him. She kissed him on the corner of the mouth and he put on fake frown. She trailed he fingertip gently across the frown lines on his forehead and saw his lips twitch as he fought back the smile that wanted to appear.

"You poor, poor man," she said. "It's really hard on you, isn't it?"

He nodded, still fighting the smirk.

"You've suffered a lot," Carol said. "With the birth of our girls?"

He nodded again, more of the smile breaking through before he bit it back.

"It's a really good thing you got your balls cut open," Carol teased. "That way you don't have to go through this ever again…"

He snorted then.

"Asshole," he responded. "One more time I do. And one of these days, you're gonna be happy about it, and I'ma remind you how sore you were at the beginning."

Carol frowned at him and rolled her eyes dramatically.

"You're the asshole, making it all about you and your suffering," she said, but she couldn't help but smile at him.

"That's alright," he commented. "Made you smile…didn't I?"

She swatted him and took her leave then of the bed.

"Can I have some more Sprite?" Daryl called at her. "I mean…you ain't doin' nothin'."

Carol shot him a look and he didn't try to hide the grin this time.

"I'll bring you a Sprite too," Daryl said, "just as soon as you have this kid. Bendy straw and all. Let you drink the whole damn thing."


	6. Chapter 6

**AN: Here we go, another little chapter here. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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The need to knock at the door was a social courtesy that had long since been foregone in the Dixon kingdoms of 223 and 225 Pecan Grove Road. It had become clear to everyone residing in either of the houses, the day the gate had been put right in the middle of the fences that somewhat separated their houses, that though they lived in separate homes, there was never a really large separation between the two families.

So Carol walked right into the madhouse next door, not wholly unlike her own home, and found her sister in law in the kitchen serving up toasted sandwiches as quickly as she could flick them out of the two skillets she was working with and onto plates to cool.

That was one big difference between the two homes.

Where Carol's house was a veritable ocean of estrogen, Andrea's home was an absolute sea of testosterone.

"MJ!" Andrea yelled at the top of her lungs, not even having realized that Carol had come inside. "Randy! Get the lead out!"

Carol heard the thundering of feet upstairs just as Andrea noticed her.

"Hey dear," Andrea said, a quick and exhausted smile flitting across her face before she turned her back to Carol again and finished with the last two sandwiches she was toasting. As soon as she flicked them onto the plates to cool, she moved both skillets to the sink and then turned around with a sound that was a cross between a sigh and a groan.

"Bad time?" Carol asked, raising her eyebrows.

Andrea moved her mouth to speak, but was interrupted when MJ and Randy, Andrea's two oldest baby boys, came stomping into the kitchen.

"Ma! We gotta get outta here an' this ain't even done," Randy said, looking at the sandwiches piled on the two plates as though they were absolutely inedible.

"Get some bags, Randy," Andrea said. "Get some tinfoil and wrap them up. Last time I checked, you had thumbs…even if you haven't found an occasion to use them in your life."

Merle Junior, MJ, set about eating one of the sandwiches while he halfheartedly helped his brother, with one hand, to wrap the sandwiches in tinfoil and put them into paper bags.

That was another big difference. Whereas Sophia and Lizzie both went through stages of eating so little, too much time spent reading fashion magazines that Carol considered to be trash but still found, practically hidden, in their rooms, that they seemed to be on hunger strikes, Andrea and Merle put half their paychecks into feeding their brood. There was never a need to ask the boys if they were hungry, there was only the need to point them in the direction of the place where you intended to feed and water them.

_And Carol knew that Andrea had her own hidden magazines to battle against._

"Ain't got time to pick up Hays," MJ drawled. "Not and bring him back here."

"Well where can you take him?" Andrea asked.

Carol caught MJ give Andrea a look and then he smirked. She rolled her eyes at him.

"You be nice to your baby brother and don't act like your father, he isn't a very good role model," Andrea mumbled, flicking a nearby dish towel in her oldest son's direction.

"You the one married him," MJ responded. "Look…I gotta be at lifting, gotta drop Randy off, and I gotta run food by Jake's practice?"

"And I need you to take sandwiches to your Daddy. He's working late," Andrea said.

MJ shook his head.

"Ain't gonna happen, can't," he said. "Don't got the time. You can go get Hays…drop the sandwiches off on ya way."

Andrea looked like that wasn't what she wanted to hear, and it most likely wasn't. That was one of the great things, honestly, that she'd found about having a son that could drive. It cut down on her back and forth.

Andrea was a nurse, and though she'd drastically cut her hours from what they once had been, given that raising four boys took more time than some might imagine, she still stayed busy for most of the hours in the day. If you added, on top of that, the fact that the eldest Dixon brother, Merle, wasn't as nearly as dedicated to making his wife's life run smoothly as his younger brother was, Andrea had often been left to, essentially, raise _five _boys.

"I can't pick Hays up," Andrea said to her oldest. "I can't. I've got a flat. The same flat I had since yesterday and nobody's brought me the tire I was supposed to be waiting on."

MJ snorted and pushed the bags of sandwiches toward Randy, who was choosing silence at the moment as his only defense, that wouldn't be going with them.

"I'll get'cha tire on my way in if Daddy ain't brought it up from the shop," MJ said. "You could walk down there…couple of miles? Roll the thing back…right on up the road."

Andrea glared at him and he snorted.

"I'll bring the tire if Daddy don't bring it first," MJ said.

"And Hays?" Andrea asked.

"Call Daddy," MJ said. "Maybe he'll bring Hays and the tire."

Andrea sighed.

"I'd get both faster if I did walk," she muttered.

"I can take you," Carol offered. "It's no big deal and Daryl's home with Jude. He'll be here when the girls get home. I wanted to talk to you anyway."

"Problem solved," MJ said. "Aunt Carol to the rescue."

Andrea nodded, looking a little sour about the whole thing, though Carol imagined it was mostly about the fact that Merle hadn't fixed her tire and had left her, on her day off, without any real means of transportation.

"Looks like Grumpy Mama," MJ said.

Carol backed up, all of them already knowing what was going to happen as soon as those words were uttered. It happened quite regularly since MJ had grown to a point where he was quite a large "boy" of 17 that stood a head taller than his father and, due to his weight lifting hobby and sports hobbies, was a good bit brawnier.

Andrea didn't have fight left in her, so she clearly just braced herself and backed against the counter, prepared for MJ to do exactly what he did…he heaved her up, bridal style, and dramatically bobbed her for a moment like he was rocking an overgrown baby.

Andrea did, of course, what anyone would do in that situation and waited for it to be over. And Carol laughed, because it was clear all over MJs face that one of the greatest thrills of his life so far was that he was able to lift and rock his mother without her really being able to do much to stop it.

"Is the Grumpy Mama gonna chill out?" MJ asked, putting on a dramatic "baby talk" accent.

"Put me down or the MJ's going to be grounded until the Grumpy Mama decides he can come out of his room again," Andrea answered back, though it was clear that she wasn't truly angry about the gesture.

She was restored to her position of having both feet on the floor and she hummed at her son as he hugged her roughly and kissed her forehead before Randy ran over to quickly kiss her on the cheek.

"MJ's picking you up after practice?" Andrea asked Randy.

"Nah," Randy said. "Mike's Ma already said she would drop me by. Gonna get burgers 'fore then so there ain't no need in making me a plate."

"10-4," Andrea responded. "Get outta here. You're both going to be late and Jake's gonna starve."

Carol accepted and returned the barked "goodbyes" that were tossed at her and watched as both MJ and Randy, bags of sandwiches in hand, thundered toward the door with absolutely no grace between them, collected shoes, and went in sock feet out the door, slamming it hard behind them.

Then she looked back at Andrea and smiled at the exasperated expression and deep sigh she got.

"So you already picked up Jude?" Andrea asked.

Carol nodded.

"And I should have just gone ahead and picked up Hays," Carol said. "But…we can go get him now? Take Merle some food? Might even get that tire while we're down there."

Andrea groaned.

"Or he could have just brought it home yesterday after I asked him to," she said. She shook her head.

"Boys will be boys?" Carol teased.

"If I had half the trouble from my boys that I have from my husband…I'd have gone insane years ago," Andrea said. "You need to go tell Daryl or you want to call him?"

"He's not even going to miss me," Carol said. "And if he does, he'll call over here and figure things out pretty quickly. Bring your cell?"

"Always," Andrea said. "Just…lemme grab some shoes. I don't want to go barefoot."

Carol followed her through the house, much messier than her own, even though her house was anything but clean, and watched as Andrea waded around in the floor of the closet for matching shoes. She put them on quickly and Carol followed her back through the house to gather her purse and keys. Carol grabbed the sandwiches that Randy had bagged for Merle and followed Andrea out.

"So how's your patient? After his little…operation?" Andrea asked, once they were crossing her yard and headed for the gate that would take them into Carol's yard and eventually toward her car.

Carol chuckled.

"He's fine, but he's going to milk it, you know that," Carol said.

Andrea hummed.

"I could get shot in the chest and Merle would still ask me what's for dinner," Andrea said. "He can jam his thumb and suddenly he can't do a damn thing for two days."

Carol laughed.

"That's about right," Carol responded.

"Thank you, by the way. For driving me?" Andrea asked.

"I would've hated to see you walking down the street…poor Hays trying to keep up…while you rolled a tire," Carol said. "You'd probably be alright until you hit the stop sign for Pecan, but that hill's pretty rough…it would be a pretty serious race to see if you or the tire would make it down to the house first."

"And Hays?" Andrea asked.

"Well, he'd catch up eventually," Carol said with a laugh.

"So what'd you want to talk to me about?" Andrea asked as she got into Carol's car. Carol waited to respond until she'd walked around the vehicle, gotten in, and buckled her seatbelt.

She cranked the car and pulled out of the driveway, turning in the direction of the daycare where both of their youngest went and where, actually, all of their others had gone before they were old enough to start kindergarten.

"Well," Carol said, "you're going to find out soon enough anyway…nobody around here can keep their mouths shut. It looks like Daryl and I are going for lucky number five. I'm about eight weeks already."

Andrea was silent for a moment. She was silent, actually, most of the way down Pecan Grove Road. Carol jumped when Andrea finally reached forward, smacking her hand on the dash with surprise. It made a loud enough noise that Carol knew the action had to have at least stung.

"Shut up!" Andrea spat. "No way! Are you serious, Carol Ann?"

Carol chuckled.

"Is that good or bad, because there's one thing I don't joke about, and that's babies," Carol said.

"Fuck…" Andrea said. "You know what this means…how did this happen?"

"I think you know how it happens," Carol said. She raised her eyebrows and looked at Andrea's shocked face when she stopped at the stop sign. "Or maybe you don't…"

Andrea tipped her head to the side and gave Carol an unamused look. She groaned.

"You know what it means," Andrea said. "You know what it always means."

Carol shook her head slightly.

"It doesn't mean a thing," Carol said. "You're just being superstitious. You're careful and nothing's going to happen in your house."

"It's not superstition," Andrea said. "It's a curse…or a magic spell…or something. And you know it! No matter how careful we are it isn't going to matter. I'm going to get pregnant from…from Merle's toothbrush touching my toothbrush or some nonsense like that."

Carol chuckled, not even bothered by her sister in law's reaction.

"That's definitely _not_ how it happens," Carol said.

Andrea groaned and dropped her head against the window. Carol checked the rearview mirror and, seeing that they were alone on the road for the moment, remained stopped at the sign even though nothing was coming.

"Are you happy?" Andrea asked.

"Not there yet," Carol said. "But I'm working on it."

"Congratulations," Andrea said, the word almost coming out as a question.

"Thanks," Carol responded.

It was an exchange that had taken place so many times between the two of them that it had the sound of an over rehearsed script.

"What'd Daryl say?" Andrea asked.

"He's thrilled," Carol said. "Not that I expected any less from him…you know Daryl."

"Yeah," Andrea said. "I do. And I know Merle too."

"Just tell him to hurry up and have a vasectomy too," Carol offered.

Andrea snorted.

"I had a better chance of outrunning the tire…_carrying _Hays," Andrea offered in response. Carol chuckled at the image it brought to her mind.

"Then just don't have sex with him for like…I don't know…three or four years maybe, and the curse will be broken," Carol offered, biting her lip to keep from laughing. Seeing a car coming down the road behind them, she pulled the rest of the way up to the stop sign, rolling out far enough to check once more for cars, and then made the turn she'd been putting off.

"If you'd told me that last night," Andrea said, "then I'd have said we were on a pretty good streak. Now I'm just over here thinking that morning sex on your day off isn't all it's cracked up to be."

Carol laughed.

She dropped a hand from the steering wheel and reached across to pat Andrea's leg. Andrea dropped her hand over Carol's and squeezed it affectionately.

"I'm really happy for you," Andrea said. "For the record…and I know you'll be happy soon too. Look at it this way, this one might be that boy you were hoping for."

Carol hummed.

"I wouldn't count on it," she responded.


	7. Chapter 7

**AN: Here we go, another little chapter here. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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"What you doin' up here?" Merle asked, coming out to meet Andrea and Carol before they made any move at all to get out of the vehicle with Hays.

"Come to get that tire," Andrea responded. "Figured if it's at the house I've got a better chance of getting it changed."

Merle growled low in his throat at her and then directed his eyes toward Carol. He tipped his head slightly at her and greeted her and she returned the greeting.

For brothers, there were more ways that Daryl and Merle were different than alike. And the most obvious of those ways were how they felt in regard to their families.

Both men thought their children were treasures, that was one thing they had in common. And both men were proud of their families. Merle counted it as some sort of testament to his manhood that he had four healthy boys while Daryl thought he was blessed to have four healthy girls. The difference, really, came in that Daryl made Carol feel like, all throughout their time dating and through their marriage, that she was a special blessing to him…made only more precious because she was the mother of his children. Merle, on the other hand, seemed at times to think that Andrea was nothing more than someone he was "strapped with" and he often treated her as such.

And Carol wouldn't have traded one for the other for the world. She often teased Andrea that she was on a special mission from God simply to tolerate Merle Dixon the way that she did…four boys or not.

"I told ya I was bringin' that tire home," Merle said.

"And you didn't," Andrea responded. "At least if it's at the house I can change it and get my mobility back without having to wait on people to drive me everywhere."

Merle clenched his jaw at her.

"I tell you I'ma do somethin', I'ma do it. Don't need you comin' up here tryin' ta bust my balls in fronta nobody," Merle said.

Andrea leaned up in the passenger seat and looked around. At the moment it appeared that Merle was the only one who was even at the shop. He and Daryl ran the place and they had a handful of others who worked there, but they tended to work on shifts and sometimes the place was crowded while other times it was just the two of them keeping steady hours. Without Daryl for a few days, it looked like Merle was alone at the moment.

"Doesn't look like I'm busting your balls in front of anyone, Merle," Andrea said. "There isn't a soul here."

Merle rolled his eyes toward Carol and Carol shook her head slightly as a reaction.

"Can we just get the tire?" Carol asked. "We'll trade you…sandwiches for a tire?"

She reached across and gathered up the bag with sandwiches in it that would "hold him over" until he got home for dinner. Merle accepted the bag, but still looked a little irritated with the whole thing.

"I'll load it," he said. "Just stay in the car."

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Carol tried not to draw attention to the fact that Daryl was moving a little stiffly when he came to sit at the table and help with homework and sign any and every document that needed to be signed for this club or another. She appreciated the help because it cleared her up to get dinner ready and focus on Judith's needs.

"What are we having?" Sophia called from the table.

"Chicken casserole," Carol responded back.

"We had that three days ago," Sophia pointed out.

"And when you start cooking dinner," Carol responded, "then you can make sure we eat something different every day of the week."

Daryl snorted.

"Your Ma ain't no short order cook," Daryl said. "Besides, chicken casserole's good even if you eat it every day…I'ma sure enjoy what's left over tomorrow."

"We might have it again tomorrow," Lizzie muttered.

"And you might not have nothin'," Daryl commented.

Carol bit her lip a moment, listening to Lizzie's protests at Daryl's insistence that she didn't need to eat if she didn't know how to appreciate what was put in front of her. It was something she should be accustomed to hearing, honestly, since it was Daryl's motto with the girls from the moment they got around to eating solid food. She had always had to convince him that he couldn't have the same motto with baby food…the baby had to eat, even if she was being picky.

But, for Daryl, a lot of it boiled down to the rule that the Dixons were thankful for what they had.

"Everyone's eating," Carol said from the kitchen. "You're just eating chicken casserole and you better start clearing the table. Mikka? Can you get the dishes? Lizzie and Soph? Drinks?"

There was shuffling about at the table and then the kitchen began to fill as Carol's "helpers" started to move into get things ready. Daryl came, as well, and offered to take the oven mits from Carol to get the casseroles and move them to the stove so that everyone could serve themselves and meet at the table.

Once they were all settled and Carol had moved Judith's chair close enough to help her with her meal, everyone who had even thought of complaining about the food was too busy eating to continue with their earlier grumblings.

"Soph…" Daryl started, speaking around his food before he paused to swallow and then continued. "Found you a car, maybe…but, uh, you gotta tell me what'cha doin' if you want it. How you intend to earn the thing?"

Daryl had Sophia's interest, but it was divided with her desire to be annoyed at the suggestion that she had to earn the car in question.

"What am I supposed to do for it?" Sophia asked.

"Well," Daryl said. "Way I see it is you get an allowance for what'cha do now…which is damn near nothing. So you start doin' a little more around the house? Let me hear you getting good reports for doing your chores and then some? That'll maybe make a raise on your allowance…but you gonna have to do something extra. Get some kinda job. Show me you serious about this and you're responsible enough to be trusted with a car."

"What kind of job?" Sophia asked.

Daryl shook his head slightly.

"I don't care about that," he said. "You wanna find one, find one…get out there and look. You don't wanna find somethin' on your own? I'll find somethin' for you up at the shop…cleanin' up, washin' cars? That kinda stuff's always available."

"When am I supposed to do homework?" Sophia asked. "If I'm running this house and I'm working at the shop?"

Carol stifled a laugh by turning her face against her shoulder as she reached to help Judith with the problem she was having due to trying to pick up more than she could eat at one time. Daryl chuckled too. Sophia, at times, was given to dramatics. This time wasn't any different.

"Somehow," Daryl said, "I got a feeling that you can juggle all you gotta do, but…if you can't? Somethin' tells me you don't need no car 'cause you need to keep right here at home working on all that homework."

"Mama…" Sophia said, her voice threatening a whine.

Carol chuckled and shook her head.

"Don't think I'm intervening on your behalf," Carol said. "Your Daddy is right. If you've got enough homework that you can't do your chores and work a few hours? Then you certainly don't need a car."

Carol rolled her eyes in Daryl's direction and caught him smirking at her even as he pretended to have turned his attention back to his food.

"And besides, I need someone around here to run this household…and if I can't even run my own household, I certainly can't be expected to stand up for any of the people living in it," Carol teased.

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"He's an asshole," Carol said.

Daryl reached around her and plucked his toothbrush out of the decorative cup that she'd put up in the bathroom for them. He ignored, on the whole, that everything in his bathroom matched. It was something he'd have never put time and energy into, but he didn't really mind it simply being there when she'd been the one to put it together.

"He's always been an asshole," Daryl said. "Tell me somethin' I don't know."

"You should say something to him," Carol said.

She moved to the side, allowing Daryl better access to the sink and the toothpaste while she went through her meticulous beauty routine.

"What the hell you want me to say?" Daryl slurred through a mouth full of toothbrush and toothpaste.

"You could start with you ought to treat your wife better," Carol said. "Or…you could go with…I don't know…Daryl have you seen how he treats Andrea? She deserves better than that. As long as they've been together? And they have four boys together and he can't even treat her with…not even respect, he's just an asshole."

Daryl chuckled.

"You're right," he said. "He's an asshole. He is. You ain't gonna hear no disputing that on my part, but I don't know what you want me to say to him that you think he's gonna listen to."

He rinsed his mouth and watched her shaking her head, more at what she was thinking than at him.

Merle had been an asshole since, or at least Daryl suspected since there was no way of knowing for sure, the moment he'd been born. If it were possible, he was probably an asshole in the womb. Marrying Andrea had, in a lot of ways, mellowed him out, but that didn't mean that he had done some kind of entire turn around.

That was sometimes the scary part. Merle with Andrea was much better than Merle without Andrea had ever been. It was terrifying to think what he'd be like now if he'd never married her in the first place.

And he loved his kids. There wasn't anyone who could dispute that Merle Dixon cared about his boys, but he just wasn't the warm and fuzzy kind. He'd always been the kind of old man that, when his kid got hurt, instead of being able to offer them the band aid and hug that might have made it all better, he was going to tell them to rub some dirt on it and inform them that boys, especially Dixon boys, didn't cry.

Merle Dixon was all about "tough love," and maybe that extended in his mind to his wife as well. At least, that's what Daryl told himself most of the time to keep from saying something to his brother about not acting the way that he thought he should act.

It seemed, though, that Carol was determined he was going to address the issue in some way, and though he really didn't like the idea of trying to have some heart to heart with Merle about his marriage, it appeared that he was going to have to figure out a way to make it happen.

Because Daryl wasn't too much in the practice of not giving Carol what she wanted, especially when it was something as simple as saying something to someone about being a jackass.

Daryl sighed and pushed Carol out of the bathroom in front of him, catching her shoulders as he did and squeezing them.

"Let's go to bed," he said. "I'll talk to him tomorrow. Don't got a damn clue what I'ma say to him, but I'll talk to him…tell him to try to undo all these years of becomin' an asshole to try to be somethin' looks a little like a damn human being."

Carol laughed at him and brought her hands up to catch his. She pulled one of them around and kissed it before she rubbed her face against it.

"I'm lucky that I picked the right Dixon out of the bunch," Carol commented.

"Damn lucky," Daryl commented with a laugh before he turned her around and kissed her, lingering a moment and just enjoying the warmth of the embrace and the soft kiss that accompanied it. He laughed when he pulled away, bumping her nose with his own in a teasing movement. "You won the damn Dixon lottery."


	8. Chapter 8

**AN: Here we go, another little chapter here. Sorry it's taken me a while to get back to this one. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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Daryl didn't get around to talking to Merle the next day. He didn't get around to going into work that day at all. He'd stayed home, still technically on the "leave" that he'd taken from work, and then he'd ended up spending part of the day taking care of a few items that he could handle off of the "needs to be done" list around the house.

So when he got to work the day after that, he was determined to have a chat with his older brother so that when Carol asked, which she would undoubtedly would, if he'd talked to Merle, he could answer honestly.

He didn't get around to it immediately, because immediately upon arriving he needed to sort out everything that was threatening to go to shit because of his absence, but it wasn't long before he made his way out of the office and took a look over Merle's current project to see how long it might be before he could ask him to step outside with him, probably for a cigarette, and talk to him then.

Today there was only one other man in the shop working. He was a man named Jerry Scott and he wasn't more than two years older than Daryl. He was a pretty decent man at his trade, but his social skills left, perhaps, a little something to be desired.

Of course, that meant he fit just fine in their shop.

Daryl walked over, looked over the car quickly, while Merle tinkered under the hood, and then circled around to the car that Jerry was working on so that it didn't look like he was hovering over his brother. In the shop, Merle handled the mechanical work with two guys he had coming in every now and again and Daryl had his own men who came in to help him with body work and painting. MJ worked there part time, and he had yet to make a decision as to which "side" of the shop he really preferred training in more.

"Jerry, that the car Ham Macey brought in?" Daryl asked, trying to remember everything he'd flipped through in the office…all the open work they had at the moment.

"You got it," Jerry responded.

"How long you got on it?" Daryl asked.

"Get the damn door in I ordered?" Jerry said. "Figure a week at the longest, but I ain't heard nothing back on when the part's coming in."

"That the door I ordered?" Daryl asked.

"That'd be the one," Jerry said. "Also workin' on that truck belongs to Tim, but I got it in the booth ready to paint if you wanna take this one over and get the rest of it ready to go."

Daryl hummed at him.

"Yeah, maybe in a minute," Daryl said. "Got a couple things to take care of, but I'll pick up on it if you want or I can spray later."

He didn't wait for a response because it didn't matter. Daryl and Jerry were equally suited to either of the tasks and it wouldn't matter which they were saddled with doing. Daryl walked over to where Merle was working and looked at the car he was working on again.

Some people never forgot faces. Daryl didn't forget cars.

"Merle…there weren't nothin' on this car in there," Daryl offered.

Merle came out from under the hood and closed it before he responded to Daryl.

"'Cause I ain't written it up yet, lil' brother," Merle said with a chuckle.

Daryl hummed.

"Ain't that…Sheri Wagner's car?" Daryl asked. "Was Abe Wagner's?"

Merle hummed in response and walked around the car like he was giving body work a once over, even though Merle tried to avoid body work with the same amount of energy that Daryl tried to avoid mechanical work.

"Yeah, it's Sheri's," Merle said.

"Weren't that car just in here not two damn weeks ago?" Daryl asked.

He already knew the answer to the question. He wasn't really looking for an answer as much as he was testing to see what Merle would give him as an answer.

"Same damn one," Merle said. "Just…needed a couple adjustments. I fixed it up. She's comin' to pick it up here in a bit."

Daryl circled the car himself.

"Weren't this car in here not two damn months ago?" He asked, pressing the issue a little more.

"Damn sure was," Merle commented. "Couple damn bugs here an' there. Shit's gonna happen when Abe gives his kid a damn car he ain't had tuned up since he traded in his damn dinosaur for it."

Daryl hummed and sucked his teeth.

"You got a minute? Take a walk? Got a couple things I'd like to chew your ears over," Daryl said.

"In a minute," Merle said. "Gotta pull this outside. Sheri's pickin' the shit up in a quarter of an hour."

Daryl accepted his brother's reasoning for not taking a "stroll" with him around the outside of the shop and he spent the time it took for Merle to move the car outside doing small tasks around the place that wouldn't tie him up enough that he couldn't escape for a moment when Merle was actually free.

Daryl lingered somewhat close to the open stall doors when he saw Sheri Wagner get dropped off by someone to pick up her car. He watched Merle go out, give her the keys to her car, and talk to her like he would any customer that he'd done repairs for.

Well, almost any customer…especially if that customer was a barely twenty year old blonde with a spray tan, teeth that were a little whiter than nature had ever made them, and dressed in an outfit that would have made Daryl chase Sophia right back into the house to change out of.

Sheri Wagner knew exactly what she was doing. And so did Merle Dixon.

As soon as the blonde drove away in her car, a car given to her by her old man…a man that was somewhere around Daryl's age…Daryl walked out and met Merle before he ever even headed into the shop. He turned his hand in the air, signaling a "once around" and stared walking, lighting a cigarette as he went.

Usually they took the "walks" to talk about the business out of the earshot of others that worked there, but in this case it wasn't exactly business that Daryl wanted to talk about.

"Noticed you ain't took no money in from Sheri?" Daryl said as Merle fell in step beside him.

"Prob'ly my damn fault they was problems," Merle said. "Didn't figure I'd charge her nothin' for fixin' shit shoulda been fixed right in the first place."

That was their policy. Merle had Daryl there, but then…the policy applied to everyone and not just young blondes.

"She's been up here a good bit," Daryl said. "Almost could say she's hangin' around this place, ya think?"

Merle grunted and turned his attention to his own cigarette.

With enough distance between them and the shop, by Daryl's judging, he stopped walking and shielded his eyes from the sun with the hand that wasn't holding the cigarette while he regarded his older brother.

"You tryin' to work something up with Sheri Wagner?" Daryl asked, not feeling like beating around the bush and knowing that Merle wouldn't respond to it anyway.

Merle narrowed his eyes at Daryl and ignored him.

"You're a married damn man," Daryl said. "A married damn man with four fuckin' boys, Merle. That girl? More fit to be hanging around here for MJ than for your old ass."

Merle sucked his teeth.

"There ain't not a damn thing wrong with lookin', lil' brother," Merle said. "It's what the hell we got eyes for. You'd know that if you didn't hand your damn balls over to Carol. Let her cut the damn things off."

"I still got my damn balls, I promise your ass that," Daryl said.

Merle snorted.

"They might be hangin' there, but you ain't had control of 'em since you put a damn ring on Carol's finger and you know it," Merle said.

Daryl chuckled at his brother and shook his head.

"I love my wife and I love my kids…might wanna strangle every damn one of 'em sometimes, but I love 'em more than my life. But if you're runnin' around? You're a son of a bitch. That's all the hell I gotta say about that. And if you ain't? You're still a son of a bitch," Daryl said.

"I take care of my kids," Merle said, "they don't want for a damn thing."

"And the woman what give you them kids?" Daryl responded. "You take care of her? Because she was stuck with a flat damn tire that your son finally changed…because you couldn't take the time to do it?"

"You keep your nose in your own damn house and I'll keep mine in my house," Merle said. "I ain't done shit you need to be worried about. It's a free damn country, and lookin' don't cost a thing."

"What if that lookin' was to cost you Andrea?" Daryl asked. "Is it worth it, Merle? To your sorry ass? Is it worth it? Because…I'ma tell you one thing. Sheri Wagner might give out a piece or two of ass here and there, for what the hell she figures it'll get her…and you might, you just might land you a taste. But she ain't gonna shack up with the likes of you. You seen yourself, Merle? Because you ain't no blue ribbon prize. And you best think about shit…because them boys of yours? How the hell you reckon they gonna be when they find out that you run around on their Ma? How you think MJs gonna be when he finds out you was sniffin' at a piece of ass fit for him?"

Merle almost pretended he couldn't hear Daryl, but Daryl knew that he could. He could hear him, but how much he would listen was still yet to be seen. Merle was hardheaded, he always had been, and sometimes he was just hardheaded enough that he was a little like an animal that didn't learn things until he got his ass stuck in a trap.

"You tellin' me, Daryl, that you ain't once looked at another woman?" Merle asked a second later with some amusement.

Daryl rolled his eyes at him.

"Of course I've looked, Merle. There ain't a person alive can say they ain't never looked. It ain't the lookin' I'm worried about. It's the touching. You can look, but that ring on your finger? Means your ass better not touch," Daryl said.

Merle sucked his teeth.

"You ain't never been one for living, Daryl," Merle commented. "Been one for just…gettin' by…your whole damn life. They gonna throw dirt in your damn face 'fore you ever lived even one minute of your sorry ass life."

Daryl shook his head at Merle.

"You and me? Just got different ideas of livin' maybe?" Daryl said.

Merle shook his own head in response.

"Nah…nah that ain't it," Merle said.

But he didn't say what "it" was. He just shook his head once more.

"You done tryin' ta bust my balls? Since you ain't got control of your own?" Merle asked.

Daryl glared at his brother. Sometimes talking to his brother was almost impossible. Sometimes he could simply tell that he wasn't going to get anywhere with him. Other times? There had been a few times that Merle had been reasonable, of course…but they were few and far between.

Today was clearly one of those days that it would have made more sense for Daryl to sit down and try to have a heart to heart conversation with some of the driveway gravel.

"Don't be a damn idiot," Daryl said. "Don't throw away a good damn thing for chasing after what you think is better. Ain't gonna get you nothing more than a man in the desert chasing after damn visions of waterfalls. And it'll lose you a hell of a lot."

"They'll be throwin' dirt on you 'fore you ever start to breathe," Merle commented in his own annoyed tone.

"Least my damn family'll be there to see me off," Daryl said. "Get your ass to work, Merle. You ain't good for nothin' else. And don't give that damn girl not a thing more if money don't change hands. We ain't running a charity."

"I got shit to do," Merle said. "Takin' the rest of the day off. Don't look for me."

"Weren't plannin' on it," Daryl responded.

Merle burrowed in his pockets and came up with his keys. Apparently he was genuinely planning on leaving. That, though, wasn't entirely unlike him. He'd leave the shop any time he got pissed off about something, leaving Daryl being one of the few actually reliable people around. What pissed Daryl off the most, honestly, about Merle wanting to leave at that moment was that he was going to have to hit the phones pretty hard to get someone else in there to fill in for his brother or they'd be turning away anyone who came up with a problem that Daryl wasn't able to fix.

But right now?

Right now Daryl would take anyone in there working besides Merle.

"Treat your damn wife right, Merle," Daryl called after his brother as Merle headed for the truck that he fully intended to leave in. "It's the right damn thing to do!"

"Dixons don't always do the right damn thing," Merle called back.

He turned around, just before he got in his truck, and Daryl held back the urge to simply run at him and try to clobber him, something he would have done, and had done many times, when he was younger.

"Never figured you for such a dick," Daryl snarled.

"Never figured you for such a damn pussy," Merle shot back.

He got into his truck and Daryl turned to head into the shop, not even wanting to watch the asshole when he drove off, sure that a middle finger would be the only gesture that he saw.

And Daryl was thankful that Jerry had worked there long enough, and seemed to understand the two of them well enough, that he would know better than to ask a single question about what had happened or what it was all about. He knew by now that Daryl and Merle just went a few rounds every now and again. Daryl supposed, though, that's just what brothers did sometimes. Especially if one of those brothers bore a striking resemblance to a horse's ass.


	9. Chapter 9

**AN: Here we go, another little chapter. We're really just getting going here and I'm trying to get/keep the momentum up as best I can. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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Carol had been married to Daryl long enough to be able to tell when something was on his mind. She'd also been married to him long enough to know that, no matter how hard she pushed, he wasn't going to talk about anything until he was ready to talk about it. Pushing, in fact, usually meant that it was going to take longer for her to get an answer to "something on your mind?" than simply waiting him out until he offered up what he was thinking.

So when she'd asked him what was on his mind, she hadn't been surprised to get a halfhearted, and obviously fake, "Nothing" before he'd continued on about his business and settled in to help Mikka with the project that she had to do for her science class…one of those lovely projects that were theoretically for children but truthfully required an advanced degree to even begin to understand what was expected from the thing, less likely to figure out how to achieve it with the materials that they had on hand.

Working through the project with Mikka, it seemed, must have done something to help Daryl work through whatever he was thinking about, though, because by the time Carol had everyone else in bed and retired to the bedroom to get herself "undone" from the day, Daryl was taking Mikka up for bed. And when he came in the bedroom, there was no doubt that he was ready to hash out what was on his mind.

He came, leaning into the bathroom, his hands on the door frame, and waited expectantly for Carol to ask him once more what was on his mind. That was, as usual, his green light to spill whatever he'd worked through.

"Did you ever think of cheatin' on me?" Daryl asked.

Carol was struck. She took a moment, watching her own reflection in the mirror, to finish wiping off the cleanser she used to remove her make up with as much care as she normally would.

"You know I would never do that," Carol said, shaking her head to herself as she rinsed her washrag and made a "clean" swipe over her face once more.

"I know you never would cheat on me," Daryl said. "But that ain't what I asked. I asked if you ever _thought _about cheating on me."

Carol rang the rag out with more attention than it really required and put it on the side of the tub. She toweled her face off.

Dary knew that her boyfriend, the only man she'd seriously dated before she'd dated Daryl, had an obsession with her ability and inability to be faithful. It had been, really, one of the real reasons that she'd known that the relationship with him simply couldn't be one that she committed to for the rest of her life, even if she'd come close to it.

His name was Ed and he'd been, in many ways, almost as charming as she'd found Daryl. She'd said yes to a proposal that she'd broken off not a few months afterwards because, it seemed, that Ed was much more jealous than she could handle. Although she wasn't the cheating kind, and never would have cheated on anyone in a million years, Ed seemed to think it was the only thing that she thought about. And twice he'd physically "punished" her for what he was "sure" were her transgressions. The first time she'd accepted his apology and his sincere begging for forgiveness…swearing he was so in love with her that he had just "lost his mind" when he thought about another man touching her. The second time, she'd decided that his mind was just too apt to wander off and get lost for her comfort.

Even the mention of cheating made her uncomfortable and made muscles tense in her body that had been, until the word was muttered, relaxed.

She must have shown, in some way, that it made her uncomfortable too, because she jumped slightly when she felt pressure on her shoulders and then she realized that Daryl had simply stepped into the small space and rested his hands there. He squeezed her shoulders gently and she relaxed a little before he kneeded the muscles.

"I'm not accusin' you," he said. "Asking a question, that's all. Just…in all this time, did you ever _think _about it or ever see anyone that you thought maybe, even if you weren't gonna actually do it, you might like to sleep with?"

Carol sunk back into him a little.

"Did I ever see anyone I was attracted to? Yes, of course," Carol said. "And…I mean…fantasies? I've had some. But I never thought about cheating on you. At least, not really seriously. Why? Are you thinking about cheating on me?"

Carol pulled away and turned around to catch Daryl's expression at having the question turned back around on him. He stammered out his "No" in disbelief and then he blushed slightly, the crooked smile of being up to no good flitting onto his face for a second.

"Daryl!" Carol exclaimed. "You _have_! Who are you thinking about cheating on me with?"

She wanted, in some ways, to be mad, but Daryl's expression let her know that she was probably going to laugh when she heard his response. It may very well be as bad as the time that, sleep deprived and not at all in his right mind, he'd declared to her at about three in the morning that he could really see what it was that Kermit saw in Miss Piggy. And declared, "After all, she might not be _hot hot_, but the pig's got a real _sex quality_ about her."

"No one! Not really…but…" Daryl stammered out.

"But?" Carol asked, wishing she could be more sincere than she was managing at the moment.

"But if Sharon Stone every showed up an' wanted me to fuck her? I don't know…I think I'd have to just figure out how the hell to make up to ya ass…that's all I'm sayin'," Daryl said, shaking his head even as he said it and turning a brighter shade of red.

Carol scoffed at him and Daryl laughed.

"You gettin' pissed? How good a damn chance you think we got of that happening? Because I'm thinkin' you know somethin' I don't if you gonna get pissed about it," Daryl declared. "Besides…I'd give you a free one too. Just so long as they was famous, and they ain't never got no real chance of showin' up."

Carol hummed at him and leaned in to kiss him before she stepped around him and let him get to the sink to go through his nightly routine. She reached around him, smoothing on the cream she always swiped on before bed and watched him brush his teeth, saying something about the fact that she'd squeezed the toothpaste from the middle again.

"What's this about, anyway?" Carol asked. "Because something had to start it."

Daryl hummed at her and she waited patiently for him to finish brushing his teeth and rinse his mouth, the toothbrush being returned to the cup from which it had come. Once he'd dried his face off, and Carol responded to his question of whether or not she was done in the bathroom, he switched the light off in there and she let him out of the small room and went toward her side of the bed.

"Merle," Daryl said.

"Merle what?" Carol asked.

"Merle…was Merle that got me thinking about it," Daryl said. "Talked to him today about Andrea, but it was like talking to a damn brick wall. In fact, I'da prob'ly got through to the damn wall with enough time, but Merle's a lot damn thicker'n that."

Carol listened to him and tried to take it in.

"Merle's cheating on Andrea?" Carol asked.

She was surprised that her own pulse quickened at the thought of someone cheating on another person. Maybe it was because it hit so close to home. Maybe it was because, as closely as their lives seemed to have paralleled since they'd known each other, it felt a little too close for Carol not to be affected by it.

"If he ain't," Daryl said, "he's thinking about it."

"That's terrible! Daryl!" Carol declared, swatting at him before she even thought about it. He laughed in response, though, not what she expected.

"What the hell you gonna hit me for? I ain't got no control over what Merle does with his dick. I'd rather not think that much about Merle's dick," Daryl protested.

"I'm sorry," Carol said, settling down onto the bed.

"Are you gonna cry now?" Daryl asked.

Carol wiped at her eyes. She hadn't realized, honestly, that there were tears gathered there. She sniffed and reached around to her side of the bed for a tissue to wipe her eyes and nose.

"Maybe I am," she said. "Daryl I've got to tell Andrea. It isn't fair for her not to know…"

"And if he ain't, if he's just thinkin' about it?" Daryl asked. "You gonna up and bust hell wide open if you tell Andrea Dixon that Merle's running around on her ass."

Carol swallowed and wiped at her face. She knew it was true. If Andrea thought Merle was cheating? She could really go either way. She'd either just be destroyed by the thought, which Carol didn't want to see, or she'd probably lose her mind and kill him…which Carol didn't think she wanted to see.

"She deserves to know if Merle is cheating on her," Carol said. "She does."

"But if he ain't? If he's just lookin'? If he's just runnin' his mouth?" Daryl asked. "That's what the hell's had me bugged all damn day long because I don't know whether or not I should say something. Hell…I don't think he's doing anything, but that don't mean he ain't capable of it."

Daryl moved from where he was lying on his side of the bed to a sitting position and pulled Carol over to him like he normally did if she was upset about anything. He wrapped her in a hug and rocked her gently against him.

"What the hell are you crying for?" Daryl asked. "Stop crying or I'm not telling you anything else."

"You can't threaten me into not crying," Carol responded. "Besides…it's not real crying. I can't even control it."

"You're leaking then," Daryl teased, clearly relieved to see that she wasn't genuinely upset with him, she was simply being overtaken by an emotion that didn't care if she wanted to actively express it or not.

"Why would he do cheat on her?" Carol asked. "Did he say that? I mean…does she even know why he wants someone else?"

Daryl made a humming noise like he wasn't really wanting to share everything he knew.

"I don't think it's so much that he wants someone else," Daryl said. "I mean, I don't think it's nothing Andrea done or didn't do. I think it's just…ya know…somethin' different. Somethin'…new and exciting."

Carol chuckled ironically to herself.

_New and exciting_.

It was something you expected of kids. Tossing toys over their shoulders because they got something better. Leaving their old bike to rust out by the shed somewhere because they had a new bike that was better…more impressive.

And adults did it too. Upgrade to the best. The biggest, the fastest, the loudest…_the newest_.

_But you always liked to believe that only applied to things. You liked to believe that it didn't apply to who you loved or how you loved them._

_Except, evidently it did._

"She's been married to him over twenty years," Carol said. "She can be married to him for twenty years…have his kids, raise them, work a job…make a home for him."

Carol shook her head and swallowed at the lump she didn't expect to be choking down.

"But she can't compete with something _new_ and _exciting_," Carol said. "Not after twenty years. The new wears off…can't last forever. And the exciting? After twenty years? Where's the exciting anymore after that long? You've covered just about everything there is to cover…twice over even."

"Exciting turns into comfortable," Daryl responded.

"And comfortable is boring," Carol said.

Daryl chuckled.

"Depends on who you ask, I reckon," he said. "I've always been pretty fond of comfortable. You know I don't like nothin' new. Shoes…clothes…gotta go through the whole damn process of breaking it all in. I'd just as soon not have to do it."

Carol snorted.

"So I'm like old shoes?" Carol asked. "You already _broke me in_? That's what you think of me?"

Daryl laughed then.

"I think I'm going to bed because I ain't gonna win this one. I lost this before I ever even started playing," Daryl said. "You ain't a shoe, but I reckon we both broke each other in. Don't mean nothing bad, right? Means…what? You found something works for you? Like the way it feels?"

He slid down into his place in the bed, obviously meaning what he said about going to sleep to keep from digging any kind of hole he might have to crawl out of eventually. Carol looked at him, her eyebrow cocked, not entirely sure that she was hiding her slight amusement at him.

He smiled at her, an overly dramatic smile done on purpose to make her give up the fight and let her own smile go free from its restraint, and then he puckered at her.

"Ain't you gonna give me a kiss?" He asked.

"Be serious," Carol said. "Do you think we ought to tell Andrea?"

She made the move to slide into her own position in the bed beside him.

"I think if he's just running his mouth it'd do more harm than good," Daryl said. "Hell…if I was just thinking it, ask yourself. Would you wanna know? Just for thinking?"

Carol hummed at him.

"You gonna tell her?" Daryl asked.

Carol sighed and finally shook her head.

"I guess not right now," she said. "But…you tell Merle. If he does something like that? He's…signing his own death warrant because somebody's going to kill him."

Daryl sucked his teeth.

"Is it gonna be you? Because I'm not sure, but I think homicide might be bad for the baby," Daryl said.

Carol swatted him and he laughed at her.

"Don't worry about it tonight," Daryl said. "I'm gonna talk to his ass again, especially if the person I think he's sniffing around keeps coming up to the shop. But it ain't getting fixed tonight."

"Who do you think it is?" Carol asked.

Daryl hummed.

"I'm not telling you that. Not right now," Daryl said. "Turn out that lamp, now."

Carol sighed, but she did turn out the lamp. She eased back down into her position and Daryl rooted over and wrapped his arms around her. She closed her eyes, sleepily, enjoying the comfort as much as she could and trying to ignore the nagging feeling that the conversation had brought up in her.

She'd always thought of it as a general rule that Dixons valued what they had, and family they valued above all else, but everyone had the ability, it seemed, to simply change their mind. Even Dixons.


End file.
